WASHINGTON — A long-awaited bipartisan Senate bill to give the president the authority to respond to threats from TikTok and similar companies will be unveiled Tuesday afternoon by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a committee spokeswoman told CNBC.
The Virginia Democrat will hold a news conference at 3pm ET with South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, the lead co-sponsor of the legislation.
The exact text of the legislation has yet to be released, but Warner suggested this past weekend that the bill will not be limited to just reining in TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
“When it comes to foreign technology coming into America, we have to have a systemic approach to make sure we can ban or prohibit it when necessary,” Warner said on Fox News Sunday.
“TikTok is one of the potentials” that could be targeted with the bill, Warner said. “They’re taking data from Americans, not keeping it secure.”
“But what worries me more about TikTok is that this could be a propaganda tool. The kind of videos you see would promote ideological issues,” he added.
Warner’s bill comes nearly a week after the House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced a Republican-sponsored bill that aims to do much of the same thing.
The House legislation passed the GOP-controlled committee 24-16 along party lines, with unanimous GOP support and no Democratic votes.
Called the Deterrent America’s Technological Adversaries, or DATA, Act, the House bill mandates that the president impose broad sanctions against companies based in or controlled by China that engage in the transfer of “sensitive personal data” from Americans to entities or individuals based in or controlled by China .
And while the DATA Act has advanced out of its jurisdictional committee, it was unclear Monday when, or if, it would receive a vote in the full House.
CNBC’s Mary Catherine Wellons contributed reporting to this story.